Dear Mr. Harrison Barnes,

We know your decision is made. We get it. You’re outta here. You’re going to blow this corn on the cob stand and head for the coast.

It’s understandable. And with as many options as you had, it was undoubtedly a difficult decision.

Make no mistake, we wish you the best of luck. We’ll root for you when we stumble across a UNC game while channel surfing.

But we can’t help but feel a little bit snubbed.

So we’d like to submit this list of the top 10 reasons you should’ve chosen to become an Iowa State Cyclone:

10. Just what is a Tar Heel, anyway? Did the UNC president step in a piece of chewing gum while walking across campus? Even shortening it to just “the Heels,” doesn’t help, because then we’re left with the image of a basketball game between the parts of a dismembered foot. We can hear the announcer now: “The Heels will play the Toenails in the semi-finals,” he states in a deep radio voice, “and the winner will go on to battle the Kentucky Cankles for the championship!”

9. Without one-of-a-kind Ames traditions like Hickory Park, where will you fuel up for your next rampage of dunks?

8. The new Sukup Practice Facility. Have you seen that place? No, really. Have you? Wow. Just, wow.

7. In order to be North Carolina’s most legendary player, you’d have to end up better than Michael Jordan. We don’t have quite as high of standards.

6. You look better in cardinal red than you do in baby blue. Seriously, red is the color of passion, the color of a blazing fire and a matador’s cape. Baby blue is the color of … a baby’s onesie.

5. Iowa is a friendly place. People even came up with a term for it: “Iowa nice.” It doesn’t work that way everywhere. In fact, there’s an exact opposite effect. We’re pretty sure we’ve heard of something called “North Carolina mean.”

4. Ames is where you grew up. Now, instead of swinging by for a home-cooked meal or free load of laundry, you’ll have to Skype your way home.

3. A contest between a bighorn ram and a bird in a tornado is no contest at all. An F5 tornado has winds in excess of 250 mph. That’s fast enough to hurl a car the distance of the length of Jack Trice. And if that’s not enough to take down a sheep, then Cy will jump out and get all kung fu on his furry, mountain-climbing tushy.

2. It’s good to be the underdog. Playing for North Carolina is like playing for the Yankees or working aboard the Death Star. It might be a safe bet — OK, maybe not in the second metaphor — but winning is more fun when you’re David, not Goliath. Or Luke and not the Emperor, as it were.

1. You could have had the undying admiration of a hometown crowd. While you may go on to have a wildly successful career with UNC, you’ll never get the love in North Carolina that you would’ve had as a hometown hero. And that, sir, is a fact.

Didn’t change your mind? We didn’t think we would.

Now get out there and show those Carolinians there’s more to the Midwest than cold, corn and cows.

Sincerely,

The Editorial Board